People who want to live in a Chinese city with acceptable air quality can try the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, the island city of Haikou, the coastal town of Zhoushan or the Pearl River Delta city of Huizhou.

That’s it.

No other major population center in the country makes the cut, according to a report by China’s environment ministry on air pollution in the first half of 2013.

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Levels of airborne PM2.5—particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter—measured on average 76 micrograms per cubic meter across 74 large urban areas in China from January through the end of June, the ministry said. That’s more than seven times the World Health Organization ‘s recommended exposure of less than 10 micrograms per cubic meter over the course of a year.

The WHO advises exposure to levels less than 25 micrograms per cubic meter over a 24 period.

Among all 74 cities, only Lhasa, Haikou, Zhoushan and Huizhou met the national grade-2 standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter, the ministry noted.

The results, while grim, are part of a wider reckoning for the government and ordinary Chinese who viewed deteriorating air quality in many areas as a serious threat to public health. Calls for the government improve air quality surged this past winter, when swaths of the country were blanketed by rarely seen air-pollution levels.

In Beijing in January, an air-pollution monitor at the U.S. embassy recorded PM2.5 levels above 800 micrograms per cubic meter – more than 25 times the recommended health standard in the U.S. The embassy monitor published a reading of around 107 on Friday afternoon.

Growing vehicle traffic and industrial output such as steel production, among a variety of other sources have contributed to rising PM 2.5 levels in recent years. An official from the environment ministry was quoted by the state-run Xinhua news agency this week as saying the central government would invest 1.7 trillion yuan ($280 billion) in the coming years in efforts to control air pollution. The news agency quoted another official as saying a draft of the action plan to control air and water pollution would be published within the year.

Corrections & Amplifications: A previous version of this post included the wrong conversion for 1.7 trillion yuan. It is the equivalent of $280 billion, not $280 million.

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